A Fast & Friendly Quilted Potholder Tutorial

Not only are quilted potholders a practical gift — everyone uses them — but they are also a quick and easy quilting project. Small bits and pieces of your favorite fabrics can be used to create a useful item to keep or give away. Plus, learning how to make a quilted potholder is quite easy.

Here is a list of what you need to get started and some helpful tips for sewing a quilted potholder:

Supplies:

Fabric for the front and back of the potholder — these can be the same or different. You can use a leftover quilt block for these as well. My favorite (finished) sizes for potholders are about 8” by 8” for a square potholder and about 8” by 10” for an oblong potholder. The backing fabric or piece should be about 1” larger than your potholder top. You can piece your potholder top using a favorite quilt block pattern or simply use a solid fabric.

Insul-Bright insulating material — This is a specially made fabric that reflects hot and cold energy back to itself. This material needs to be used with at least one layer of cotton batting in order to absorb condensation. Cut this material the same size as your backing fabric.

Cotton batting — Cut one piece of cotton batting the same size as your Insul-Bright and backing fabric.

Fabric for binding. Cut a 2 1/4” by width of fabric strip to use for binding. You can also use a purchased bias tape for your potholder binding. A double-fold bias tape works best.

Quilted potholder instructions:

Step 1:

Begin by layering your pieces in the following order: potholder back (wrong side up) Insul-Bright (there is no right or wrong side to this fabric according to product instructions), cotton batting, and potholder top (right side up).

Step 2:

Pin layers to secure while machine quilting. The potholder won’t need a lot of quilting, just needs a small amount to hold everything together. Basting spray can also be used at this point to adhere the cotton batting to the potholder top.

Step 3:

Machine quilt through all layers.

Tip: After quilting, you may want to baste around all edges 1/8” from the edge to make sure none of the layers shift while you are binding your potholder.

Step 4:

Make a binding using your 2 1/4” by width of fabric binding strip. To make your binding, start at one end and fold the strip in half lengthwise (wrong sides together), pressing until you have reached the end of the strip.

Step 5:

Bind your potholder using prepared binding from Step 4 or using purchased ready-made binding. Bind the potholder just as you would bind a quilt.

Now that you know how to make a quilted potholder, you might want to check out some of these other Craftsy patterns:

Note: The simple steps used for creating a potholder are the same for creating a mug rug—the only difference is that mug rugs generally do not require the addition of the layer of Insul-Bright.